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This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community.The author’s views are entirely his or her own and may not
reflect the views of Moz.

Google’s actions against “overoptimised” sites have been intensified and it seems that the recent updates are able to detect various links-related overoptimisation violations that can result in short or long-term positional drops, with or without warnings. Even though Google announced the Penguin update on the 24th if April 2012, changes on Google’s link evaluation system have been noticeable several weeks before the public announcement.

It appears that in some cases Google has been overzealous, hitting (temporarily) even websites with rather natural link profiles. In other cases, Google admitted algorithmic classification mistakes, publishing apologetic messages like this one Matt Cutts posted on Google+.

According to Patrick Altoft (branded3) the sites that have received unnatural links notifications fall under five main categories, and they are not just the ones participating in link exchanges or other types of link networks. Rand made a Whiteboard Friday video about 6 changes every SEO should make before the overoptimisation penalty hits. Now that Google has rolled out the Penguin update against "black web spam," making sure that your website's backlink profile does not violate Google's quality guidelines is quite essential, especially if your traffic has gone down.

This is a follow up to the post ‘How to Monitor Your Website For Link Equity Loss’, which can be used to identify backlinks from low quality or penalised/deindexed websites. However, this post intends to cover the following links related overoptimisation cases:

A) Excessive Link Acquisition

B) Site-wide links detection

C) Unnatural Anchor Text Distribution

D) Unnatural Spread of Links Authority

A. Excessive Link Acquisition Check

Acquiring a high number of links over a short period of time has never been a good practice and webmasters need to keep an eye on the levels of acquired links, especially these days that negative SEO seems to become more of an issue. Phrases like the following one from Dan Thies, seem to be heard more often lately:

"Both sites have received “unnatural links” messages in Webmaster Tools. Neither site has had a “link building” campaign ever. By using 3rd party tools (e.g. Majestic) I can see a lot of unnatural links pointing at both sites, but I didn’t put those links there"

There are two quick ways to check your site's link acquisition velocity, using Ahrefs or Majestic SEO.

A high number of blog-roll, header, footer or sidebar links can trigger Google’s “overoptimisation” wrath and keeping them to a minimum would be a rather reasonable thing to do. Certainly some site-wide links may have occurred naturally but the less "overoptimisation" signals you site sends out, the better. There are a few ways to quickly check your website against site-wide links with the quickest one being Webmaster Tools.

Under 'Your site on the web' -> Links to your site WMT list the domains that link the most to your site. The ones that link several times should be flagged as potential site-wide links and be manually checked.

Using Webmaster Tools to detect site-wide links is a rather easy and quick way. However, because WMT don't report all backlinks Google actually see, for a more thorough investigation a third party link intelligence service should be used such as Majestic SEO, Open Site Explorer, Ahrefs etc. One thing to bear in mind using any 3d party service, is that their crawlers do not try to replicate Google's behaviour, therefore in some cases the data can be significantly skewed. This is particularly the case for links from web sites that Google has removed from its index but the 3d party services will still report as normal links.

A section in the Ahrefs FAQ page reads: “Having the full information at hand you may decide on subjective estimates of links and figure out real situation with the given website or page”. In a similar manner a Majestic SEO rep commented that:

"Our index is independent of Google and will remain so. If Google has banned a site, it does not mean there are no longer links to that site. We map the link graph – not Google’s interpretation of it."

C. How To Check For Unnatural Anchor Text Distribution

Overoptimised anchor text seems like a ticking bomb, especially after Google made public the following two messages:

"Tweaks to handling of anchor text. [launch codename "PC"] This month we turned off a classifier related to anchor text (the visible text appearing in links). Our experimental data suggested that other methods of anchor processing had greater success, so turning off this component made our scoring cleaner and more robust."

"Better interpretation and use of anchor text. We’ve improved systems we use to interpret and use anchor text, and determine how relevant a given anchor might be for a given query and website."

This task is quite more complicated because, ideally, you need as much data as possible. Exporting anchor text data from as many different data sources as possible is strongly recommended e.g. Majestic SEO, Ahrefs, Open Site Explorer, Sistrix, Blekko.

Next you would need to filter the data removing the following:

Dead links - These are sites that no longer link to your site but used to link in the past. Filtering out the dead links is absolutely necessary and some 3d party services offer such tools. Otherwise, proprietary link checkers can be used like the one we use at iCrossing UK - Alex Ovsianikov's creation. Counting dead links into a backlinks audit can result in wrong conclusions.

Deindexed linking root domains - It's rather pointless carrying out a backlinks audit for Google including links from sites that Google has deindexed. NetPeak Checker, makes this task quite easy as it is explained on this post.

No follow links - These are unlikely to cause any overoptimisation issues and could be discounted

Site-wide links - These should be counted once, otherwise the anchor text distribution will be greatly skewed. Different services treat site-wides differently; hence you need to pay extra attention at how each service treats them.

After having applied the above filters, the remaining backlinks data could be analysed for different anchor text types such as:

Exact match targeted keywords e.g. hr software

Broad match keywords e.g. online hr software system

Brand terms e.g. BreatheHR, www.breatheHR.com

Keyword + brand terms e.g. Breathe HR software system

Image links

Other e.g. 'click here', 'this site' and other natural anchor text that doesn't fall under any of the above categories.

Having classified all different anchor text variations, it is now relatively easy to spot weaknesses - pay particular attention for spikes on exact match keywords as in the following graph:

D. How To Check For Unnatural Link Authority Spread

Another area where overoptimisation can occur is when backlinks are consistently gained from authoritative domains. Tom Anthony created a handy link profile tool to detect such anomalies.

In the following example the links authority of the site represented by the blue line seems quite unnatural compared to the backlinks authority spread of the other 4 sites, which seems far more natural. Any high spikes towards the middle of the graph could potentially be flagged by Google as suspicious attempts of PageRank maninpulation.

Proactively carrying out the above checks will help identify weaknesses on a site's backlink profile and be better prepared for Google's current and forthcoming "overoptimisation" updates.

Don’t Let The Penguin Leave You In the Cold

As with any new algorithmic update there will be winners and losers. Google have acknowledged that and there is a feedback form for web masters who feel that their site should not have been affected by the Penguin update.

If all the above fails, then try this petition where site owners are urging Google to kill the penguin update.

About the authorModesto Siotos (@macmodi) works as a Senior Natural Search Analyst for iCrossing UK, where he focuses on technical SEO issues, link tactics and content strategy. Modesto is happy to share his experiences with others and posts regularly on digital marketing blog Connect.

About Modestos —
Modestos Siotos works as a Technical SEO Director for iCrossing UK. His main focus includes all aspects of technical SEO such as link audits, site migrations, e-commerce and international SEO . @Modestos_ posts regularly on various digital marketing blogs including Connect, Moz and Search Engine Journal.

124 Comments

Don't you get it? Google doesn't want you to analyze your links and website adnaseum (above).

They want you to write content like an unfed slave so consumers don't give up entirely on the internet. Google needs good content since it provides none itself. Their goal is to exploit the internet eco-system so it it can continue its link selling scheme i.e. adwords.

There are a billion web sites out there and google gives organic search results a mere 2 or 3 positions above the fold. They get 15 to 20 listings in the premeire section of all search pages and we fight over 2 or 3.

We are all a bunch of patsies... creating a website and doing SEO looks foolish nowadays.

Agreed.. I got my business closed ( website raped by the penguin ), because of sitewide links that are out of my control. Google on the other hand, spams the internet with adsense, adwords and other crap content. All of their stuff : above the fold

I`m not saying this to slam Google ( well, maybe a little ), but merely to help - I believe you are digging your won spamgrave dear Google

I agree with you. Big brands can earn the links, but small business will find it very tough as with limited budget, limited resources. Panda was good for those small website as can beat larger one by putting constant effort on the basics like content. Link building is something like demand more budget as acquire links naturaly for them is very hard.

Yes, i have also observed this kind of thing with another major business listing directory. Like, YellowPages.com link ranked on first page against the "Christmas Printing" Keyword but when you open this page you get found nothing there. Whats this going on...

Here is the link that ranked against the Keyword "Christmas Printing"http://www.yellowpages.com/orlando-fl/mip/christmas-printing-464228499

Wow, It is said that everyone here is depend on google. I hate to say that but we all let this happened . I hope there was no impover like google which is taking control on our business and time and life . I wish one they we all let google alone and never pay a dime on adverting

Interesting post. It really amazes me that somebody would go to such lengths to attempt to interpret the vagaries of this latest update, despite all the complete garbage it's produced, and continues to produce, and all the collateral damage it's created, and then tell people that, in addition to working like an "unfed slave" to produce compelling content, they need to constantly police their websites link profile to ensure that events that are entirely out of their control don't get them hosed back to page five for no apparent reason. Oh, and by the way, it's all based on speculation, because nobody outsite the inner sanctum at Big G really has any idea how this stuff works, except apparently not very well, unless you're a big brand.

To be completely honest with you (and I have no illusions anybody cares), I think anybody who preaches pure "white hat," content based SEO (looking directly at you, SEOMoz) should be ashamed of themselves for not condemning Google over this latest fiasco. Seriously, this level of bootlicking for a company that has repeatedly demonstrated it's business practices to be highly unethical, not to mention sanctimonious and self-righteous in the extreme, is rather nauseating.

I mean, punishing people for actively obtaining links, while you pay the rent by selling links, or ranking based on a "qualty score" that your own SERPS fail miserably? Is there some kind of "shame-ectomy" involved when you get hired by Google? Because that behavior would make a sociopath blush. That's not to mention banning 15,000 of your advertisers overnight because they suddenly aren't "quality," even though they just spent years helping you build your ad system and get rich. Or, the outright havoc that's been created in honest peoples' lives by Penguin, businesses ruined overnight and garbage promoted to page one, and big brands getting a big pass.

Google owns search, let's face it. If you want search traffic, you deal with Google. It just amazes me that a website that supposedly promotes success through quality, content, user experience, etc (all quite noble ambitions) would give these hacks a pass, and seriously tell people they need to police their own link profile so they don't get slapped.

And, that's without even mentioning the negative SEO industry you're basically implicitly stating is now going to ramp up bigtime. I mean, come on! How to you do all that with a straight face?

And that's all I have to say about that. Just had to get that out of my system.

It would be better if Google gave the power in GWT to account administrators to devalue / disassociate links they found linking to their site that they had not done or authorized.

That in itself would take out any question of the potential to harm others with negativeseo.As for having to take out links that have caused spikes in the link profile just because of an offline promotion or a viral marketing success - this is where it gets ridiculous.Still - the baove sugestion would at least EMPOWER the webmaster back to do SOMETHING.

Why not arm business owners with such a feature in GWT?You can use the GWT API to download 100,000 backlinks and you could utilize this to let Google know about links to your website you want it to ignore.For small business owners webmasters it would be even helpful just to have something basic on the GWT interface under Links to Your Website.﻿

Good idea. It still does not address the fact that sites are being activiely PENALIZED, and not just the ones on the backlink side, I'm talking about whole business models on the front end that are taking heat.

There are clear antitrust issues with this update. And if one takes the time to think about it, its not too much different than the standard oil case.

"... a company that has repeatedly demonstrated it's business practices to be highly unethical, not to mention sanctimonious and self-righteous."

That's it. Further, Google, with it's poisoned coporate culture, holds itself up as a sort of Progressive police, lecturing and censuring other companies whom it deems immoral, while itself acting with astonishing ruthlessness--as it crushes small businesses--and remarkable aloofness, as I get better service from the most surly bank and cold-hearted insurance company.

What if you owned a web design company did a site change from mydomain.net to mydomain.com ?and then changed all the links on the websites you had built over 12 years to point to the new URL. That would give a nice spike in the backlink discovery and you wouldnt have done anything wrong.

If your company in the past built or designed a website - there was nothing wrong with a link crediting you at the bottom of it. There was nthing wrong with dofollow links. There was nothing wrong with having membership sites that gave incentives to users to GET A DOFOLLOW LINK... oops like this forum. Post a lot and you get your first dofollow link. Nice.That was so 7 days ago.

They can build as many algo rules to catch as many scenarios as they want - but in the end there is more and more collateral damage.

All they do is feed an ever growing exasperated community of SEO's and webmasters so they constantly are chasing their tails - while the biggest losers are small businesses that just scratch their heads and wonder why the phone aint ringing.

Seems to me they should have used a scalpel - but as usual they used an axe. There is a problem. It did need to be fixed. They went about it the wrong way or with a solution that was ill thought and not ready for production environment.

This was a useful post, one issue I don't really understand is unnatural spread of authority links, I mean I would assume this would apply if a site had thousands of links from low ranking sites; not just a concentration of high authority links?

Unnatural links' authority spread is quite common on websites who have been aggresively buying links. If most backlinks come from authoritative linking root domains it wouldn't seem very natural, especially if the links' authority spread of competitor sites is more similar as represented in the above example graph.

Notice how the backlinks authority spread of the orange, red, green and purple websites are quite close compared to that of the blue one that stands out.

I want to ask one question. Suppose backlinks coming from the websites which we have designed and developed, definitely it would be unrelated websites with keywords, is counted as natural or considered as over optimization? We have so many links like these and mostly coming from authorty domains.

Thanks for sharing such useful third party tools and of-course your thoughts.

2. Overoptimised anchor text, in case all these links target the same keyword

3. Links from irrelevant sites

Microsites.com published a very interesting study on the impact of Penguin, comparing the characteristics of sites hit by Penguin with those which weren't hit. Some of their findings include:

Every single site we looked at which got negatively hit by the Penguin Update had a 'money keyword' as its anchor text for over 60% of its incoming links.

Having over 60% of your anchor text being a money keyword did not guarantee that your site would be hit by the penalty (many of the sites not affected had numbers just as bad), but if under 50% of your anchor text for incoming links were “money keywords” it’s all but guaranteed you weren’t affected by this update.

Only 5% of the sites affected by the update had a URL structure (ex: bluewidgets.com) as 2 or more of their 5 most common anchor texts. On the other hand, nearly half of the sites not affected had the same.

Penalized sites generally had very little links coming from domains and websites in the same niche. The numbers obviously show that it’s OK, and probably beneficial to have links coming from nonrelevant sites, however it’s important to supplement those links with links coming from sites relevant to the subject matter of your site.

Personally, I would get rid of site-wide footer links, turn the high quality ones into homepage backlinks only, get rid of the ones from low quality and irrelevant sites, and make sure there's no money terms in the anchor text (use brand/url anchors).

But the problem with the side wide links still persists. I am a webdesigner and most of my web sites that I designed have a small link in the footer towards my site (e.g. Web design by Michael Janik or only Web design). I am really not sure what will happen if I remove it everywhere. Will I drop in the rankings or will it be good because I do not have sidewide links anymore. I am scared!!!!

I am also curious about Michael's question regarding web development companies that are linked from client sites in the footer, as that applies to us. Will this practice hurt us? Having all our clients link to us using our company name? (To me, that would seem natural to have many domains linking to you by your company name)

Also, regarding site-wide footer links, I understand that Google is trying to reduce manipulated SEO tactics, like stuffing your footer with keywords. However, aren't they kind of throwing the baby out with the bath water on this one?

For instance, what about legitimate menus? We use footer links to create what we call "duplicate navigation", which is a usability feature, not an seo feature. Google is the one always stressing the importance of writing and designing for the USER. And duplicate navigation in the footer achieves exactly that. It makes it easy for users to continue navigating through the website once they've reached the bottom of the page. This is a best practice straight from Steven Krug's methodology.

So are we, and our clients, going to be penalized for making it easier for users to navigate through a website because of menus in the footer region?

I have understood for years where Google was heading with wanting websites to be built for people & not search engines.

I have a tiny site 12 pages.

That concentrates on one basic product and through slow and deliberate white hat SEO.

I have not only gotten more SERPS bit been able to not get tossed out with each new update.Many of the SEO' s who have been hit hard admit to buying links, and the faux blogs that sprang up filled with garbage text had to fail someday.

Well too bad you choose to ignore ALL the innocent sites being hit, and all the EMD ; MFA, NO Content sites being rewarded. 12 pages ? Is that good or bad ? What if someone else has a site with 100-200 pages on the same subject, with more discussions, social shares etc. etc. , should YOU get rewarded then , because you have 12 ( ! ) pages ? I don`t get it, sorry.

What really pisses me off, is all the people not being hit, claiming everybody else is cheating. One day they come for you.. lets hope you revenue stream has several opportunities, when that happens. And lets hope you get treated better, than you treat us now

While that is really great that your site has not taken a hit, I think you are missing the bigger picture. Your competitors are not going to try to produce quality content like before. They are going to concentrate on creating bad link profiles that lead to your site.

Now you, and white hat seo tactics, will fall victim to a loss in ranking from your compeitors black hat tactics now aimed at you.

What can you do about it? Are you going to call your competitors and ask them to remove the links? Let me know how that goes.

If all this is true, and Google really is penalizing people for things that are out of their control, then google has effectivley started world war 3 on the world wide web.

I do admire you quest for good quality strategies and I have been trying to do the same. But if these penalties do remain active then it is just a matter of time before we all fall victim.

The problem with Google changes are that they are reducing the diversity of sites being returned in the results. By effectively eliminating the value of link building, and merely rewarding sites that are "marketplaces" like Amazon, eBay or large ecommerce sites like Walmart, they have effectively destroyed the one reason I use Google - to search for companies I dont yet know.

Let's see how far they take this, but if it keeps going, they might just destroy their own visitor experience.

The excessive link acquisition side of things bugs me... there has always been and will always be sudden massive link growth, as that's the result of promotions. If something goes viral, if something interesting goes out in a press release, etc... If you create something amazing, then it gets tweeted & shared and everybody blogs about it and it gets picked up in other places and talked about then you're going to get sudden link acquisition. It must have to co-incide, or not co-incide with other factors... it can't be a factor by itself, surely. I'm pretty sure that it would be website type at the very least.

The question is how natural a sudden, excessive link growth appears to Google. A promotion or something amazing going viral will certainly bring more links to the site but the number will still be relatively low compared to the overall historic number of backlinks to the site.

If you pay attention, the website in the above example doubled its number of backlinks from about 4k to 8k in just one month. Of course other signals come into play such as the site's authority & trust as well as where these backlinks are coming from, what kind of anchor text is being used etc. Trusted domains are much less likely to be negatively affected by a very high link acquisition velocity, whereas a less authoritative domain could suffer if it gains a very high number of links over a short period of time.

This is where I begin to scratch my head. If something does go viral on the web causing a spike and from a valuable perspective (to the users) how does relevancy play? When something goes viral it gets placed everywhere. Does it go viral and lose rankings in the SERP?

With a natural progression it is easier to detect spam. However with a spike, something going viral. You can take relevancy and throw it out the window. As far as quality of sites go with something viral, you get everything low quality, medium, and high. Same with spammers they spam everywhere low quality, medium, and high.

IMO links from a spammer and something going viral could look the same to the search engine?

Sorry I may have misled... I'm not questioning for one moment that link velocity has impact, Cempers' research alone makes it undisputedly clear that it does... But I still have an unanswered question within my mind (one of many of course) as to how G will weigh this up against natural link spikes of the same velocity and volume. The example you gave could and likely does happen naturally, all it would take is that site to release bits and pieces that pick up a few links over time, then hit the jackpot with a great piece of content, or hire a new creative person or agency. Maybe they put a useful app on their page, or something funny/funnier than usual.

Quote: The question is how natural a sudden, excessive link growth appears to Google. A promotion or something amazing going viral will certainly bring more links to the site but the number will still be relatively low compared to the overall historic number of backlinks to the site.

This is simply not true. I agree with Steve above.There are so many many scenarios that could happen to make your statement incorrect. It has happened to a few of our clients. One I have mentioned before in other posts - whas an author and had come out with book promotions.Her book was mentioned on a well known book reviewer. The links that came in dwarfed previous traffic. Put it this way - the traffic surge alone in the first week made us have to put her on a dedicated box because the server she was on couldnt cope. Then the links came flooding in.

Thats a real world example. I have others.What's her recourse? The fact is simple - there are too many of these scenarios that make the theory unsolid.Am I saying that all websites that have such back link profiles are good sites who havent done BH SEO ?No far from it. I agree with you. This is a sign that something may not be right.The two operative words are SIGN and MAY. It is not s SURE SIGN.I think probably 90% of the websites with such profiles will be doing somethign wrong and acquiring links unnaturally and Google has a right to penalize those sites. I am in agreement here - totally. It may even be higher and more like 95 to 98%.My point is that there is too much collateral damage here for clean websites that have done nothing wrong. Carlos

I take your points on board but Google could use additional signals to figure out whether a huge backlinks acquisition is natural or not. For instance, a great piece of content or anything going viral would generate a lot of buzz (citations, mentions, references) on the web and social media channels, not just links.

Also, if links are naturally gained they would vary in several ways e.g. nice spread of anchor text, linking root domains authority, IP addresses, C classes, ccTLDs etc. Of course this is all speculation but I believe that in most cases Google could identify the difference between natural or unnatural excessive link aquisitions over a short period of time.

1) When something goes viral, credible sources link to the content/URL/website and this should be enough to indicate that this is good quality content and minimize the sideeffects of what you are talking about

2) content that goes viral almost never needs organic rankings, it gains momentum via email, facebook, referrals etc. As long as it ranks for it's name, that should be enough.

very interesting article! My site was affected by the penguin update, we have lost 50% traffic. But we don't get any warning in google webmaster tools. (Meanwhile I believe that there is an onpage problem)

Do you have any figures about how much links would be fine? How much is too much?

@Modesto just to clarify violations do not just apply to individual links but violations could also apply to the portfolio of links or volume of links, in a case where the links are un-corrolated to those of the competitors. Correct?

Im totaly lost, I spent 2 years slowely building my website, blogged weekly, built good links not lots but good quality from related industry got to pos 3 page 1 and over night 4th page 4!! does anyone think my site will naturaly come back up or am I having to start again?

I know personally of five situations right now where there is a large increase / spike in the link profiles for sites. All of which were natural. Looking at the profiles you could see why a bot or an algo may think it was "built" or manipulated... but thats simply because we havent built the algo or bot smart enough.

What about an author that had a book release and had it mentioned on a well known site and then within two days literally thousands of more links appeared...

What about a product launch - whether using an affiliate system to promote it or not?

Offline marketing activities can easily lead to such spikes in online activity and links.

EVERYONE makes mistakes... Even the almighty Google. Sergey said it himself. The only thing that can take out Google IS GOOGLE! And they are doing just that. Search results are worse today then they were a month ago. Remember, Google's number one agenda is to SELL ADVERTISTING! Not to help the proud SEO community...

In regards to mistakes, we have all made them. Especially with on-page optimization and link building. After, humans (not algos) LEARN from their mistakes. We are marketing differently today then we did 3 or 5 years ago. So these updates SLAM people with any past mistakes, which all SEOs have. Instead of drawing the line in the sand, they decided to PENALIZE people/websites. And that my friends, speaks volumes about the company, it's intentions, and the people that run it!

Personally I am doing everything I can to drive traffic from ABG (anywhere but Google). I am putting good content all over to places where people on those sites find it and follow back. Referral traffic is going up and up. A lot of the sites seem to be providing good links too. Guest blogging can send a lot of targeted traffic. At the end of the day its about traffic.

I think Google is digging their own grave. Anyone who thinks they are anything more than a corporate giant building their own nest above all else is nieve.

If Google deems your good content and links as bad and it ends up in a penalty, you can submit a reconsideration form telling them how/why/where they did a mistake.

It can happen, and Google is not a god.

Also, webmasters should feel free to decide what to do with their contents and links. I'm not just talking about SEOs here... Website and blog owners, in general, are not students in a class who must follow a teacher's guidelines to be granted the right to write; we are all FREE to do what we like, and of course, Google is too.

Yes, Google is getting stricter and stricter with search results allowed in its index, and it could get more stricter in the next months... but we have to decide what's best for *us*: to follow Google's guidelines and give our freedom of writing and linking what we like, or choose freedom over Google's rewards?

There are many search engines on the web. Personally, as long as my websites gets found and enjoyed by readers, I'm fine.

I'd completely agree that anchor text over optimisation is a ticking bomb, if you're not building links using the brand then you're going to be in trouble in the long term. Has anyone done any analysis about what percentage of brand vs url vs partial match vs call to action vs exact match should be included in a link profile?

To put it in another way, a relatively new site (with very low authority & trust) gaining tones of exact match anchor text backlinks all coming from blog rolls on irrelevant sites, without any other social/web mentions may not be what Google defines as "natural links".

This is not something the Penguin update introduced. It has been happening for years so pages with overoptimised backlinks could be filtered out of the SERPs. With the Penguin update the number of such signals has certainly increased.

When it comes to SEO...those who can efficiently (low cost) create or manufacture what would presumably occur naturally around a defined keyword market will ultimately win.

EVERY single keyword is a market.

Create the ecosystems around each keyword you want to rank for and 99% of the time, you'll win at SEO.

Keep doing it and sooner or later your competition will tire, run out of budget to buy links, become lazy or simply quit.

Google can make whatever changes they want, as often as they want, and still, if I adhere to #1, with all its nuances...my clients win.

Long term, zero sum, scorched earth SEO campaigns are the most satisfying form of Gladiator battle left for REAL Geeks. I'll take the feeling of success that follows achieving a #1 ranking for a 750,000+ allintitle keyword above ALMOST anything.

This is really helpful - thanks for the resources. Just wanted to point out - you can do a lot of the backlink checking and the indexation checks simply in Excel on your own machine without using other tools - that's why I love Niels Bosma's amazing SEO Tools for Excel plugin. If you're checking a lot of links, it'll use processor power and take some time, but you can do it pretty easily right on your own machine

This is why site owners should run a full link audit at least once a year. You need to know what is going on behind the scenes of your site. You might have linked to great sites, but who is linking to you? Where did these links come from?

I basically followed point B. in your article. Google's Penguin put me down page 2 (German Google not US Google) under the term "webdesigner" (eng. "web designer"). Now I am back on page 1 position 6. I still work on it and I might have a lot of Seo mistakes on my sites. But the boost I got by following your point B. in your article is just breath taking. So I would suggest to everybody to look it trough with Google's webmaster tools and delete the links or make it not sidewide anymore somehow.

I think the best practice is not to make them longer sitewide. Just one or two sites is enough.

Another thing that might influence my better ranking is the anchor-text even. I tried to have more: "click here" or "this site"-links. My guess is that Google finds this more natural. Like: Looking for a web designer? Click here.

I guess google is looking in the surrounding of the: "Click here" or "this site". Google might find it now more natural because this is the way usually people recommend sites.

Modesto, this is awesome post, I was trying to figure out the actionable steps and this really helped. I went through the embedded links and there are pretty actionable insights on "How to monitor your website for link equity loss" and the micrositemasters.com site, I am utilizing these techniques to get my websites out of the penguin impact, thanks for this Modesto!

I need some advice. I have a client who has brought on another seo specialist for consult. This person is recommending to the client that the client will get better rankings in Google if the client creates a new separate website for each page of a section on the main website, duplicating the page content from the current website, to create 100 new websites, therefore giving the client 100 new inbound links. They would be duplicating 100 pages on the website, turning them into 100 separate websites to get new inbound links. I have stated this is unethical and can decrease rankings, and have recommended legitimate inbound linking strategies, but it has turned into my word against the other consult with the other consult lashing out at me. Does this fall under Google's unnatural links warning, and can someone please confirm that this is a bad practice?

Yes - if a company takes this guys word that duplicating a website's content 100 times to generate backlinks is a good idea then the site is effectively doomed. If Google hates anything more than dodgy backlinks it's duplicate content (no matter whether it's spun or a direct copy).

i tried my best to understand the post. but found difficult to understand some basic implementations.i think the post is high in its standard or i'm below the standard of receipt.however i would be happy if your post could be split into 3 or 4 posts so that to include some examples / illustrations of the scenario. thank you for the post however

Its a nice strategy for who are putting non relevant links and quality less content. Its a good step by Google. Google always want to provide best information to those users it will always making a changes for better service.

I've been hit by Penguin/Panda, my site has fallen off the first page for the first time in years and it's falling down to me to sort this. Using the above information looks like a great start but assuming I do all this and try to remove negative links - then what do I do? Will Google re-index and recalculate the rectified issues or am I doomed forever?

Great post and exactly what I need with one of my sites at the moment. After doing link research I've noticed that I receive around 300 links from the same domain and the same anchor text is in all of them. Is that the cause of my very bad positioning for that keyword (in anchor text)? Other keywords that have cca 30 various links are doing fine but for this keyword I am on 400 in google and in the beggining of my campaign I was in top 70.

And what should I do now? Is it possible to save the thing? Should I contact the webmaster to remove my links?

Excellent Post. Highlights important factors to consider for SEO in 2013 and beyond.

However, it is all pretty simple and has always been so. Just nurture your site like you would nurture your baby and success will come automatically. Overall growth of your child is based on the inputs he/she receives since birth, internally as well as from external factors and is directly responsible for his/her personality later on in life.

In simple words, be ethical with everything you do as you would do with your child.

Ignorance can be very detrimental. Learn and educate your-self on the do's and dont's and follow them each and every day. And as much as possible, try to have everything in your control. Even if you outsource, ensure that all activites have your approval prior to being implemented/published. Never give complete control to anyone to do as they wish. No one can/will take care of your baby better than you can.

Watch this video to learn and understand 6 steps to Ethical SEO - http://youtu.be/eG50wPnpuII The production is still in the beta phase, but it will give you a lot of insight into the "all new google" and its new ways.

Google want links to be removed from sites that are not relevant to content on your site. For example, if you are a site about technology and you have harmful links from sites about casinos or pornography you can be penalized. There are companies out there that will advertise that they can remove the unwanted links and help you get back your PR, however most of them make promises they can't keep. Either they do not have the experience or know-how to remove the links or they don't have the right tools to do so.

The Link Auditors, however, are a trusty company that will deliver on promises they make to remove all harmful links. They have over five years of experience in the industry and will get you back to your original page rank in Google.

Where companies do not have the right tools to carry out removal of links, The Link Auditors have self-designed tools, specifically made to carry out different tasks in order to get rid of harmful links. One tool in particular, is their 'automated email tool'. This tool, once detected the harmful links on your site, will automatically email the sites hosting the links with removal requests. With what is a very lengthy process, if you have many links to removed, is now made quick and easy with one click of a button. Ordinarily, removing links can take a while too, however with The Link Auditor's email tool, it is done in no time at all, sometimes with over-night results!

I had spent over three years building up my website SEO and managed to get to 2nd on the 1st page of Google for the term 'York Website Designers'. Then Google rolled out penguin and I ended up about 7th on the 1st page. Not a huge drop but business has defienitely tailed off. I am just going through all my sitewide links in the footers of sites I have developed so hopefully I'll get back up there.

Can't believe I didn't leave a comment on this the first time round! Incredible post mate, as always your technical SEO knowledge is nothing short of exceptional. Would love to see more from you on here when you get the time!

I'm a bit confused about site-wide links. Is this to say that there are penalties for:

1. Site-wide links on external sites that link to any page on YOUR site?

2. Site-wide links on YOUR OWN site that link to elsewhere or home also on your own site?

Is it both? And should I then remove the link to my root URL that's in my header that appears on every page? It's like a Home button but instead it's the text title of my company name that sites in the header, with an <a href> to my root URL.

Thats a great post. I think the main survival technique is to perform SEO in regular basis and not getting bulk links in short interval of time from low profile website.

If you are getting from high pr websites then its not bad, I had experience int hat when my company ( I worked for) announced 300 job creation in Ireland, It was every where ( in most of newspaper website, govt and radio websites) nd we got few hundred links from high PR ranks in just 2-3 days. which boost our Search engine rankings for differnt keywords.

The keywords we target now have 1 page sites appearing in the top 3 pages of the results. Remember the scene from Billy Madison when he keeps seeing the Penquin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaKZkqeuRRI

points that i conclude from the recent developments in SEO are as following:

1. Suppose you have 100 visitors to your website, in this case you cann't have more than 5-6 acquisitions. i.e you will have maximum of (say) 6 people( out of 100) subscribing to a news letter, purchasing any product or getting our services.

It means 6 people have votes to your website out of 100.

In the same way Number of links should be directly proportional to Number of visitiors to our website.

So in this case getting 3-4 links after 100 visits should not be counted as link spam or unnatural links.

Also new websites should not create links till they get some visitors.

They can get visitors from the social media exposure.

Moreover genuine likes, +1 and shares are no less than a votes ; thus Google must be counting them a sort of link.

your analysis is great and it can be a very good overall health check for any website and seo project. I find very interesting the fact that Google provides a very immediate and public way to report problems with its ranking results!

Google does make mistakes and these have greater impact on businesses every day and probably we should expect to see more mistakes coming up.

Using the YP example. Say you do a search for a local pizza joint, or something like that. I don't want YP, Yahoo Local, or any of the other directories to show up on the first page. If I wanted to see YP results, I would have went there. Instead, I want Google to provide a list of relevant content which is the website for local pizza restaurants.

@Jeffwend by relevant content are you refering to organic or google places/local content or both? By your responce it seems that you would want google places/local as a separate engine say that was only accessable when you clicked google maps tab on the side?

"Acquiring a high number of links over a short period of time has never been a good practice"

What about news sites or succesfull PR's? They are both very good as far as SEO goes and they are both relavent/authorataive? These type of articels create a big spike in links. right? Does Google look at this as a dark side thing?

If i have trying to offer promotions or even if i have great deals in my site, it's natural that i win links faster. I think the problem starts when you acquire links from the same ip's or c-blocks with the same anchor text. Am I right?

Has anyone who received an unnatural links letter actually received a favorable outcome from filing a reconsideration request? In particular, when a former seo company you hired built dodgy links without your permission and cant remove them. Anyone??

Thanks for the info Modesto. Much appreciated. After 5 years of slowly and carefully building my mortgage website through obtaining mostly relevant links and adding useful and helpful content to my website, I am now severely punished by this last Penguin update by Google. My traffic dropped about 60 - 70% and my life and income have been destroyed, hopefully temporarily . I am quite upset as for years I have received positive reviews from my visitors and clients as to how helpful and easy to navigate my website is. I just feel that Google has really unfairly slammed my website and has now left competitors of mine with higher rankings that have much less useful information on their sites. For example, the top ranked website in my city for the keywords I compete for has not updated content on their relevant pages for those keywords for years. How can they be ranked #1 ? They have stale content , very few relevant backlinks and they are ranked at the top . Doesn't make sense to me. The playing field is not level and this last update does not give the user the best and most relevant search results possible.

Few questions for Modesto and anyone else who can help.

1. Should I be contacting websites that used links such as sitewide links to my site and have them removed completely? How can I determine which links to my site might be causing the most problems for me?

2. Do you think my website will come back to more reasonable traffic levels over the next few months? Is this traffic drop permanent until I make some major SEO changes to my site and backlinks ?

What I’m surprised noone is talking about is how this update is going to affect antitrust proceedings in Europe and potential antitrust violations in the USA. To me its pretty clear, if someone was developing a search engine specifically looking for the flags that google is “guidelining” down now and say that new “seo search engines” results were harmed because google is forcing everyone to play by their rules, to me, that is clearly and antitrust anti-competitive behavior.

for instance, what if i was building a new search engine that relied heavily upon anhor text? now my model is broken.

how will these guidelines affect ask and bing results?

after this new update, google’s serps are a freaking mess. so much so, ive been wandering over to bing and liking it.

What about Bing, Baidu, Yandex and the literally hundreds of search startups out there that now have to adjust their models, or even close doors, simply because google decided that they are now penalizing certain web practices ("ethical" or not, that is for another well discussed topic). google could have simply ignored the "webspam", it's quite obvious that they have found a way to identify it. But PENALIZING!

There are alot of corollaries regarding google and standard oil (in the usa of course). Via penguin, I think if one were to present a case, it just got alot easier.

Personally, when i see anchor text, nearly every time that link goes to a site or page that is relavant to the anchor text. In the spirit of the web, seems like good behavoir to me.

My take, and it seems to be popular, is that Google is seeing alot of money being paid to SEO firms, money that Google thinks should be spent on adwords. (Another antitrust issue perhaps, consumer protection!).

That all being said, and i want to make this clear, googles serps are theirs to mess up how they please. However, when certain business models and consumer behavior is effected in an adverse way, the FTC will take notice (and be sure they are watching). In the nearer term I'd bet dollars to duckets penguin is going to make the EU's case much easier to prove.

I'll make it easier for moz readers, if they so decide, to take action, at least in the usa.

I don't think there's any benefit getting 3.1m site-wide links from any site. In fact, this may get you into trouble sooner or later as Rand explains in this video. If you want to play safer, just change the site-wide to homepage only.

Recent changes by Google, especially the Penguin update, has seen nearly all of my clients improve their rankings. Competing websites that purchased bulk links to buy their way to the top via link farms and/or suspect directories are disappearing fast. Another SEO colleague that runs a large SEO firm has see all but one of his 300+ clients rise up the search page rankings by an average 17% over the last month. In ten years he has never generated bulk backlinks for any of his clients. Emphasis is on quality, never quantity.

None of these changes should come as a surprise. Google has spoken of their intentions and direction for many years now. Stick to googles terms of service and there's nothing to fear, in fact you now get rewarded!

It's not about money, but about helping the person doing the search, providing a more relevant, useful result. And yes, mistakes of the past around SEO should be punished, as in life. I applaude Google and hope this strategy long continues.

Amost none of mine or my larger colleagues clients have been badly affected by the latest Google updates. With one exception, all improved their rankings, some quite significantly. (Over 300 business clients are involved, which we monitor and track each week). As I said, we must be doing something right...

To all the people saying they see no probs with the penguin update...how about when your competitor buys 100,000xrumer/scrapebox links on fiverr with your one main keyword pointing to your root domain...so you see the issue now?

Awesome post, so if they removed this classifier for anchor text as a positive factor. Maybe the sites that have dropped from page 1 to page 2 or 3 and beyond were not penalized but simply lost the rankings bonus that the anchor text game them?

I agree with Mcarle - I don't really see any issue with this. If you build too many links too quickly and over-optimise then you will be penalised. As long as you *try* to stick to the cleanest methods you shouldn't be penalised. This article serves to highlight why you need to be careful when carrying out SEO practices for any website. Good article by the way - everything you've highlighted is relevant - I'm just surprised that people are throwing their toys out the pram over something that we could kind of see coming.